Peace Activists Boycott Estee Lauder Products, While Arabs Revive Plan for Israel Boycott

 

By Delinda C. Hanley

Ronald Lauder created an uproar among both Jewish and Muslim Americans and offended nearly everyone who cares about peace in the Middle East when he appeared at a Jan. 8 “One Jerusalem” rally and spoke out against any compromise on Jerusalem.

The gathering at the gates of Jerusalem’s Haram Al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary), one of Islam’s three holiest sites, was organized by right-wing Israeli politician and Russian immigrant Natan Sharansky. Touted as the largest rally in Israel’s history, crowd estimates ranged from 250,000 to 400,000. Lauder, who is chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella organization of national Jewish groups, was a featured speaker at the event. He joined Israeli extremists at the rally to protest a U.S. proposal to divide the city and give Palestinians control over the buildings on what Israelis call the Temple Mount.

Lauder’s strident hard-line views and support of Israeli right-wing extremists have frequently angered peace activists, but his speech at the rally was the last straw. American Muslim groups called for an international boycott of Ronald Lauder’s businesses, the Estée Lauder Companies, at a Feb. 28 news conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC.

Khalid Turaani of American Muslims for Jerusalem (AMJ), one of the groups that organized the boycott, accused Lauder of “using his name and wealth” to support Israeli hard-liners. “This boycott,” the AMJ executive director said, “will send a clear message that people of conscience refuse to do business with corporations supporting Israeli apartheid policies which violate internationally recognized human rights.”

In the 1980s and 1990s Americans and Europeans boycotted companies that did business with apartheid South Africa, helping to bring about the abolition of apartheid in 1990 and universal suffrage elections in 1994. During those decades Americans were united in their opposition to South Africa’s racist policies and enforced racial segregation.

When it comes to enforced segregation by religion in Israel, however, Americans are a bit more squeamish—perhaps because the mainstream media have not informed them that such segregation is practiced by Israel. The American media have studiously avoided explaining the causes of the current uprising and the daily humiliations and injustices Israel inflicts on its Arab citizens and on Palestinians. The strangling closures and collective punishments in the West Bank and Gaza are eerily reminiscent of actions once synonymous with apartheid South Africa.

At the news conference AMJ provided more information on Lauder and the company he keeps. In 1993, Lauder co-founded a think tank called the Shalem Center inJerusalem with Yoram Hazony, a former Netanyahu aide. The Israeli Education Ministry has described the center as “a research institute whose leanings are extreme right-wing and even fascistic.”

Hebrew University professor Yisrael Bartal describes Hazony as a right-wing extremist. A columnist for the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz wrote on Sept. 14, 2000 that Hazony is a sympathizer of the slain radical Jewish leader Meir Kahane, who called for the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel. Hazony’s goal, the columnist wrote, is to find new ways of “breathing life into Kahane’s racist, totalitarian, intolerant ideology.”

Lauder also opposes allowing Palestinian refugees to return to their homes. “For Israel to allow these people to return would be national suicide,” he said in a statement last September.

Commented Turaani, “Lauder’s opposition to the return of Palestinian refugees in order to maintain the pure-Jewish identity of Israel is nothing short of apartheid at its worst.”

Jewish Americans were just as offended by Lauder’s speech at the “One Jerusalem” rally. Despite bitter disagreement among Conference of Presidents board members when Lauder sought their approval prior to appearing at the rally, Lauder went ahead with his speech.

Even though Lauder prefaced his address by saying he was appearing as a private individual, Israel’s media described him as “the voice of American Jewry.” Israelis were given the false impression that America’s Jewish community shares Lauder’s intransigent stand on Jerusalem and favored Ariel Sharon over Ehud Barak in the Feb. 6 election for Israeli prime minister. Lauder did say that he was “representing millions of Jews throughout the world” who oppose Israeli compromise over control of the holy city.

Lauder’s presence at the gathering, which was also a political rally to support Likud’s Sharon in the thick of a heated campaign, was seen as both a slap in the face to Barak’s government and as interference in Israel’s election.

 

Content Secondary

The debate over Lauder’s speech in the Jewish press seemed to be more about Lauder’s presumption to speak for his organization on controversial matters than the fact that his harsh words against peace actually interfered in Israeli politics. A month after he was chastised by his organization, the defiant Lauder said he would continue to speak out, even against Sharon, if Israel’s new prime minister ever went back on his pledge and proposed sharing sovereignty over Jerusalem with the Palestinians. The unrepentant Lauder, who spent a multimillion-dollar chunk of his fortune on a failed 1989 New York mayoral campaign, vowed he would “do it again.” There is certainly no doubt that he will continue to support hard-line Israeli policies.

Jewish and Christian Americansare invited to join Muslim Americans in their boycott of Lauder products. While Lauder may donate some of his money to very worthy charities, the profits he makes on a bottle of perfume or after-shave may fund a racist Israeli organization or settlement. This reporter is giving up her favorite “Happy” perfume until Lauder apologizes to peace-seeking Muslims, Jews and Christians and stops funding and encouraging the hard-core extremist groups that are making the lives of Palestinians so very miserable.

Estée Lauder products include: the Estée Lauder line of perfume and make-up, Aramis, Prescriptives, Clinique, Aveda, and DKNY and Tommy Hilfiger toiletries products. Estée Lauder also owns several lines of hair and skin-care products, clothes, and shops such as M.A.C., LA Mer, Bobbi Brown, essentials, jane, Donna Karan, Stila, Jo Maline, Bumble and bumble, and Origins.

 

Arabs Call for Boycott Revival

There are growing calls in the Arab world for a revival of the boycott against Israel in response to the Israeli blockade of the West Bank and Gaza and its harsh attacks on Palestinian demonstrators. While Arab governments are discussing and studying renewal of the boycott, young people in the Gulf states, Jordan, Egypt and Syria already are boycotting unofficially not only Israeli goods but American products as well. Young people who get their news from the Internet and satellite dishes have watched Palestinian children their own age dying in the streets of Palestine. They want to do something and take a stand against injustice. They know U.S. dollars help Israel buy bullets and weapons. Not only are they taking a stand themselves, but Arab young people are making their parents and shopkeepers listen.

It is distinctly “uncool” for young Arabs to hang out or eat food from McDonalds, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Dominos, Baskin Robbins and the myriad of American restaurants that have blanketed the Middle East in the past decade. On a recent visit to Riyadh, this reporter noticed that these fast-food spots were nearly empty, even at the height of the lunch and dinner hours.

The American cars that used to be a status symbol now are an embarrassment. In malls, shopkeepers stand outside their stores talking to each other and sharing their worries that their American-made designs are not moving because their teen-aged clientele is buying European fashions.

Dr. Hanan Al-Ahmadi, general director of the Institute of Public Administration in Riyadh, whose son grew up in the U.S. while his parents attended university, said that her family recently went on a picnic with a group of friends. She passed her son a Coke and he cried, “Mama, if I drink this American Coke they will give our money to Israelis to kill a Palestinian child. Let’s drink something else.”

Dr. Al-Ahmadi was shocked that her little boy felt so deeply about politics. “This generation is living through hard times, and because of TV they see it with their own eyes,” she concluded. “Children are dying and pictures don’t lie. Americans should have respect for the opinions of Arabs. They should not go on ignoring how we feel.”

As soldiers and stone throwers continue their street battles, Palestinian consumers also are fighting with their pocketbooks by boycotting Israeli goods. Posters in the battered commercial center of Nablus read, “Don’t pay the price for the bullets which kill us,” and “Don’t finance and support the occupation.” Each day Israel tightens the economic pressures which are already costing Palestine $10 million to $12 million a day, and each night IDF forces erect new physical barriers, cement blocks and deep ditches plowed through roads and telephone cables to isolate the occupied territories from the rest of the world.

Average Arab citizens are calling for a boycott of U.S. products, as well as Israeli products, to support the Palestinians. Governments are much more cautious, saying a boycott of American goods would hurt local merchants who hold franchises or sell American goods more than it would hurt Israel. Nevertheless Arab newspapers reported that the Arab League’s Central Office for the Boycott of Israel (OBI), located in Damascus, has drafted proposals for resuming the targeted boycott of Israeli products that was officially suspended in 1993 after the signing of the interim Palestinian-Israeli peace deal. The Arab League will discuss the report when it convenes at the end of March.

Officials said the call to revive the boycott of Israel was first made by the League’s ministerial council last September, soon after Israeli forces clashed with Palestinian demonstrators in the West Bank and Gaza. The October Arab summit meeting in Cairo also discussed the boycott and voted to prepare a report on how to launch it. At that time the League also decided to launch a media campaign to tell Israel that it could not enjoy the benefits of peace if it did not withdraw fully from all occupied Arab lands.

The Arab League’s council estimated Israel would lose at least $3 billion a year if Arab states strictly observe the boycott rules, which would end direct trade between Arab countries and Israel, and blacklist any company that does business with Israel.

In response to reports of the impending boycott, the World Jewish Congress plans to remind as many companies as possible that U.S. law bars them from cooperating with an Arab economic boycott of Israel.

Of course Americans know that their government frequently employs open-ended economic sanctions and boycotts of countries whose policies it opposes, including Cuba, Iraq, Libya, Algeria, and Afghanistan. The U.S. pressures other countries to follow its lead.

Arab states may soon decide to boycott Israel, and any country it does business with, until the Jewish nation ceases its violent repression of Palestinians and returns to the peace table. The Arab boycott and the American Muslim-led Estée Lauder boycott will become history when Israel agrees to withdraw from the West Bank, Gaza, and East Jerusalem, repatriate Palestinian refugees, dismantle all Jewish settlements in the occupied territories and permit a Palestinian state to live in peace. After all, if and when a boycott is begun and ended ultimately is up to Israel.

Delinda C. Hanley is the executive director of the Washington Report.